Supporting higher data rates has long been a goal in wireless communication technologies, including, for example, wireless local area networks (WLANs). A WLAN infrastructure basic service set (BSS) mode may have an Access Point (AP) for the BSS and one or more stations (STAs) associated with the AP. The AP typically may have access to, or interface with, a distribution system (DS) or another type of wired/wireless network that may carry traffic in and out of the BSS. Traffic to STAs that originates from outside the BSS may arrive through the AP and may be delivered to the STAs. Traffic originating from STAs to destinations outside the BSS may be sent to the AP to be delivered to the respective destinations.
Traffic between STAs within the BSS may also be sent to through the AP where the source STA sends traffic to the AP and the AP delivers the traffic to the destination STA. Such traffic between STAs within a BSS may be referred to as peer-to-peer traffic. Such peer-to-peer traffic may also be sent directly between the source and destination STAs with a direct link setup (DLS) using an 802.11e direct link setup (DLS) or an 802.11z tunneled DLS. A WLAN in Independent BSS mode may not have an AP and STAs communicating directly with each other.
The earliest version of the 802.11 standard provided a data rate of 1 Mbps. A subsequent amendment, namely 802.11b, provided a physical layer data rate of 11 Mbps. With the introduction of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in the 802.11g and 802.11a amendments for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands respectively, the data rates supported were increased to 54 Mbps at the PHY layer. The 802.11n amendment increased the data rates supported to 100 Mbps on top of the MAC layer. It would be desirable to have a method and apparatus configured to support data rates greater than 100 Mbps.